Theoretical grammar пәні бойынша

9. Denotational meaning.

Proceeding with the semantic analysis we observe that lexical meaning is not homogenous either and may be analysed as including denotational and connotational components.

As was mentioned above one of the functions of words is to denote things, concepts and so on. Users of a language cannot have any knowledge or thought of the objects or phenomena of the real world around them unless this knowledge is ultimately embodied in words which have essentially the same meaning for all speakers of that language. This is the denotational meaning, i.e. that component of the lexical meaning which makes communication possible. There is no doubt that a physicist knows more about the atom than a singer does, or that an arctic explorer possesses a much deeper knowledge of what arctic ice is like than a man who has never been in the North. Nevertheless they use the words atom, Arctic, etc. and understand each other.


10. Connotational meaning.
The second component of the lexical meaning is the connotational component, i.e. the emotive charge and the stylistic value of the word.


11. Classification of word
Traditional classification of words (dating back to ancient times) – 8 parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections.
Objections:

• 
  The definitions are largely notional and often extremely quite vague; e.g. A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun (John came this morning – a man, someone, you-know-who, the aforementioned).
  
• 
  The number of parts of speech in the traditional grammars seems to be arbitrary. Why 8? Prof. Ilyish – 12 (+ numerals, statives, modal words and particles), prof. Khaimovich and Rogovskaya – 14 (+ articles and response words).